(Above, Ross boys soccer coach Alex Coressel talks to his team at halftime of the Little Giants’ season-opener against Sandusky.)
FREMONT – Few situations in sports are more frustrating than dominating a game with nothing to show for it.
The Fremont Ross boys soccer team had played keep-away from rival Sandusky for long stretches of its season-opening match as part of Friday Night Futbol, but the Little Giants could put the ball in the back of the net.
And the longer the Blue Streaks hung around, the more coach Alex Coressel couldn’t help but think his team was flirting with disaster.
“With Sandusky, I know they have a lot of team speed and they’re extremely athletic, so you never know what break-out and we-have-to-chase-them-down and keep-it-out-of-the-net moment will happen,” Coressel said.
Chris Navarro
Finally, little more than halfway through the second half, freshly-minted captain, senior Chris Navarro broke through.
Cesar Flores passed the ball from 30 yards out to Navarro at the top of the goal box. With a group of Sandusky defenders draped over him, Navarro emerged from the pack and fired the ball into the net.
“I saw the ball get played back to Cesar and he passes it back. It was a good pass,” Navarro said. “I saw the guy come behind me, so I went to the inside and I started falling forward and put my hand down. Then I saw two people come up. Then I got up, scooped the ball up and it popped out of the three guys and I got it and just shot it.
“It felt amazing. We were just waiting for it to go in. We had a lot of chances. It just felt great when it went in.”
When Ross needed someone to step up, Coressel wasn’t surprised to see it be Navarro to get it done.
“Chris has really taken on that leadership role,” he said. “It’s been extremely huge. He was named captain yesterday. Since then you’ve seen a different look in his eyes and there was a determination and he wasn’t going to stop.”
While Ross controlled the ball for much of the first half, strong scoring opportunities were hard to come by, as Ross totaled just six shots by halftime, forcing the Sandusky keeper to make just two stops. But the Little Giants turned up the pressure in the second half, doubling their shot total within the half’s first 12 minutes, had fired nine shots midway through the period, five of which were turned away by the Blue Streak keeper.
Carlos Pena
Once Navarro broke through, Ross knew Sandusky would be desperate for the equalizer. The Blue Streaks applied their best pressure of the night, firing four shots in a 90-second span, all of which were turned away by keeper Carlos Pena, including a pair of back-to-back shots from point-blank range.
Soon after, however, Pena took a kick to the ribs. Though he was OK, because a trainer had to come out and the game was stopped, Pena had to leave the game momentarily. But Ross’ second keeper, Logan Baacke, was absent from the match due to strep throat. Navarro entered the goal as an emergency back-up, until the next stoppage for Pena to return. Though he only played about 30 seconds in goal, Navarro made an aggressive sliding tackle to boot a ball away from a Sandusky attacker.
“I was really nervous,” Navarro said. “But I relied on the little bit of goalie skills I had from Club and I knew to keep calm and I could hang in.”
While Ross finished the night with a 20-7 advantage in shots, Coressel doesn’t want his team to get complacent before it hosts Sandusky Perkins Monday at 6:30.
“The big thing is to ride this and not be satisfied that ‘Hey, we beat Sandusky, we can come in and beat Perkins,’” he said. “That will not be the case. They’re a very good team and we have to have the same energy we played with tonight.”